The Power of Christ: Saints Paul, Timothy, & Titus

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

    The boxer Robert Fitzsimmons, who was slated to fight the much larger James J. Jeffries in a heavyweight title match in 1902, supposedly quipped: “The bigger they come, the harder they fall.”  While Fitzsimmons failed to demonstrate the truth of his remark on that occasion (he lost the bout to Jeffries in the 8th round), it has become something of a proverb.  How many times have we seen that the more formidable the opponent, the more dramatic the impact when he comes crashing down?

    The nascent Church faced just such an opponent in the days after the ascension of Jesus, an opponent much more formidable than James Jeffries and Robert Fitzsimmons put together.  This man “was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison” (Acts 8:3).  Not satisfied with terrorizing the followers of Christ in Jerusalem, “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, [he] went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1-2). And yet this man, Saul of Tarsus, reached Damascus a very different man, because on the way he met the Risen Christ:

Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" And he said, "Who are you, Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. (Acts 9:3-8)

“Oh what a fall was there!”, as Shakespeare’s Mark Antony says of the death of Caesar.  And when Saul fell to the ground it was indeed a great fall, one which the Church commemorated yesterday, as it does every January 25th, as the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul.  Saul, of course, later calls himself Paul, and goes on to become Saint Paul. While both might have been great falls, each in its own way, Saul's was a very different fall than Caesar's.  Caesar pursued greatness to satisfy his own ambitions, and any lasting good that came of it was simply a happy consequence God’s working everything for good (see the quote from the same St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans at the top of this post).  This working for good  took a very different form in the case of St. Paul himself. When Paul arrives in Damascus the Lord tells a man named Ananias to “come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight” (Acts 9:12).  Ananias has heard about Paul, and is afraid of him, but the Lord assures him that “he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15).  Unlike Caesar, who lived only for his own glory, Paul now lives for the Glory of God or, as he himself puts it: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). While Caesar's fall was the end of his life ("Now die, Caesar!"), Saul's was the beginning of new, more glorious life.

The laying on of hands: Joseph Ratzinger (later
Pope Benedict XVI) is made a cardinal

    Likewise, any power that St. Paul and the other Apostles wielded was very different from the sort of power that Caesar fought for.  Caesar’s power died with him under the jealous daggers of conspiratorial senators, and it would take almost two decades of ongoing civil war before another man, his great-nephew Octavian, seized supreme command in the Roman Empire and had himself proclaimed Augustus, the first emperor.  It generally happened that emperors after Augustus generally gained power through violence and bloodshed, and lost it in the same way.
St. Paul, on the other hand, was simply a conduit for the power of Christ, who tells him "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9).  It is a power that comes from outside of him, which was before him, and which continues after him.  We can see this in the fact that yesterday’s feast of the Conversion of St. Paul is followed by today’s memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, just as Timothy and Titus themselves followed Paul.  St. Paul made both men bishops by the laying on of hands, just as Ananias had laid hands on him, and wrote letters addressed to both that are now included in the canon of Sacred Scripture. Timothy and Titus likewise passed the power of Christ on to other bishops.  This power is still working through our bishops today, centuries after the bodies and the power of the Roman Emperors have crumbled into nothing.

    The bigger they come, the harder they fall.  We all fall at some point in our lives.  Let us pray that we fall not like Caesar, in a futile pursuit of worldly ambitions, but like St. Paul, born to a new life in Christ.

Is The Catholic Church A Political Animal?

   Right now we are in the midst of an unusually rambunctious presidential election here in the United States. It seems a good time to revisit this Throwback to April 15th 2015 (first published on the blog Nisi Dominus), which looks at the difference between secular politics and "politics" within the Church.

   You’re going to find politics wherever people gather, or so someone once told me when I had objected to using the secular political terms “liberal” and “conservative” to describe different factions within the Catholic Church.  And he was right, if by “politics” we mean the small-p wrangling that unavoidably accompanies any human enterprise requiring two or more people.  But that is a very different thing from Politics, of the partisan variety.  The Church is not a political party, and does not work like a political party.  Nor should it.

Synod on the Family October 2015 (photo: Vatican Radio News)

     That may seem an obvious point to you and to me, but it’s not at all obvious to everybody.  It’s a distinction lost on a large number of people outside of the Church for instance, for many of whom politics has taken the place of religion, and so has become the lens through which they interpret everything. Many such people have come to dominate the secular media in the developed world, with the result that the mass media projects the secular political model onto the Church, with bad guys called conservatives working to thwart the good guys, the liberals (sometimes referred to as progressives), who are fighting to bring about a kinder, better Catholic Church more in step with The Times.  This is the only model of the inner-workings of the Church most people see, including most ordinary Catholics, unless they intentionally seek out Catholic publications which reject this distorted view (sadly, many self-identified Catholic outlets do not).

     That is not to say that there isn’t a wide range of legitimate differences of opinion within the Church; there most certainly is.  Unlike a political party, however, where major policy planks can change overnight with a vote of the membership (and why not? They’re only opinions), there are many things in the Church which are grounded in Divine Revelation, and are therefore not up for negotiation.  This vital distinction was expressed very clearly by then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) in 2004.  Senator John Kerry, the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States, was widely criticized for receiving communion and touting his Catholic bona fides despite his open advocacy for legal abortion and other positions contrary to Catholic moral teaching.  Accordingly, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a letter (later published by the Holy See under the title “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles”) to Kerry’s ordinary, then Archbishop of Washington, D.C. Theodore McCarrick,  which gives an excellent example of how the Church is different from a political party.  For instance, Cardinal Ratzinger writes:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.  While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment.  There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI)

     This crucial difference can be obscured by applying secular political terms to church “politics”.  Political parties often change even basic positions, and this is sometimes a good thing: consider that, when I was a child, many prominent leaders in the Democratic Party in the United States were unapologetic White Supremacists and segregationists. Such a position would be unthinkable today, and yet nobody doubts that the Democratic Party is still the Democratic Party.  Using the political analogy can create the impression that proposed changes in the Church are benign or even desirable changes of the same sort.The difference between abortion and euthanasia on the one hand and war and capital punishment on the other is that the Church has always taught that the first two are intrinsically evil, and so never permissible; this teaching is part of the deposit of faith and cannot change, and to publicly oppose it is to separate oneself from the Church (hence the unworthiness to receive communion).  In the case of war and capital punishment, the Church has taught that, in some instances, they may be morally licit, a teaching that likewise cannot change.  While there are certain moral principles that bind a Catholic here (e.g., the Just War Doctrine), the actual application of these principles belongs to the prudential judgment of individual Catholic decision makers.  It is in matters of prudential judgment that legitimate differences of opinion may arise.

     Many so-called liberals in the Church today, however, are not advocating simply the more “liberal” application of unchanging principles in prudential situations, but are pushing for changing more foundational things like the teaching on marriage, the meaning of priesthood, sexual morality, etc.  The Catholic Church, however, can’t change its teachings and still remain the Catholic Church. One can usually make a case for being either a conservative or a liberal in political matters, but when it comes to Church Doctrine, we can only be Catholic . . . or Not. 

What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, And Ecumenism?

(This post was first published December 6th, 2014)


“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” (John 20:16-27)

     It seems clear from the scripture passage above that Christ does not want his body (i.e., the Church) to be divided, and that the failure of “those who believe” in Him to be one is an impediment to evangelization. And yet the division of His Mystical Body into numerous different churches and communities is an ongoing scandal.  We might well wonder whether any sort of unity is really possible.  How could it come about?  What would it look like?

     As it happens, Pope Benedict XVI gave a talk on just this topic to a gathering of Protestant and Orthodox Christians in Cologne, Germany, nine years ago (story and full text here), drawing in part on St. John Paul II’s encyclical Ut Unum Sint [text here], in part on his own reflections.  Benedict warns his listeners (and us) that unity is something that we ourselves can’t make happen, but that “it it is the Lord who gives unity, that we do not create it, that it is he who gives it but that we must go to meet him.”  He does suggest that part of the answer lies in Christians of different communities uniting against common adversaries in the wider world:

Our divisions are contrary to the will of Jesus and they disappoint peoples' expectations. I think that we must work with new energy and dedication to bring a common witness into the context of these great ethical challenges of our time.  

     At the same time Benedict recognizes that there are real differences between different Christian traditions: he points out that, from the Catholic perspective, “This unity, we are convinced, indeed subsists in the Catholic Church, without the possibility of ever being lost”. Real unity can only be achieved within the Church established by Jesus Christ, and in accordance with the Truth handed on by Christ. At the same time, he recognizes that we Catholics cannot reasonably demand that Protestants, for instance, simply jettison their entire  experience of faith:

On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not! It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline.

This looks like something of an impasse: how can we do both of these things?  Well, we can’t. Pope Benedict goes on to say:

It is obvious that this dialogue can develop only in a context of sincere and committed spirituality. We cannot "bring about" unity by our powers alone. We can only obtain unity as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, spiritual ecumenism – prayer, conversion and the sanctification of life – constitutes the heart of the meeting and of the ecumenical movement (cf. “Unitatis Redintegratio”, n. 8; “Ut Unum Sint”, 15ff., 21, etc.). It could be said that the best form of ecumenism consists in living in accordance with the Gospel.    [my bold]

Unity, then, will only come as a form of Grace, which we cannot create, but with which we must cooperate if is to be fruitful.  Our cooperation here, as in the rest of the Christian life, takes the form of fidelity, that is, “living in accordance with the Gospel.”      

     In his closing, Pope Benedict describes what fidelity of this sort looks like:

I see good reason in this context for optimism in the fact that today a kind of "network" of spiritual links is developing between Catholics and Christians from the different Churches and Ecclesial Communities: each individual commits himself to prayer, to the examination of his own life, to the purification of memory, to the openness of charity.  

Prayer, first of all, which is calling upon God’s help and submitting to his will; examination of life and purification of memory, in order to remove obstacles emanating from pride, resentment, or decisive emotional attachments, and third, as a sort of summation (just where St. Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 13:13), charity, love.  All must be done in a spirit of love toward our separated brethren in Christ.

Russell Moore

     I was reminded of this decade-old talk by the now Pope Emeritus when I ran across an interview the other day that Kathryn Lopez conducted with Russell Moore [here], president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.  Moore had just returned from the Vatican where he had spoken at a conference on men, women, family, complementarity and various other related unfashionable topics.  There are some interesting connections between his comments and some of the points Benedict made in his talk.

     First of all, when Lopez asks “What was the ecumenical dynamic like”, Moore answers: “Well, this wasn’t one of those ‘let’s pretend we all agree on everything’ ecumenical gatherings, and that’s one of the reasons it was so productive.” He goes on to explain that

Jewish leaders  . . .  Mormons and Taoists and Buddhists spoke from their perspective, without pretending to be part of some generic “faith-based community.” The pope was Catholic. This was one of the few such gatherings I’ve attended where theology was taken seriously, both in our agreements and in our differences. Probably more important than the actual sessions, though, were the coffee breaks and the meals, where we had deep conversations about things that mattered. By the end of the week, I think many of us learned to love one another more.

What stands out for me here (aside from the encouraging endorsement of Pope Francis’s Catholicity: more on that below) is, first of all, the fidelity of all the participants to their own traditions.  Without such fidelity, there can be no authenticity, and without authenticity there can be no love.  And of course as Christians we recognize the importance of personal relationships: do we not come to know and love God through the person of the Man Jesus Christ?  Notice also, for Moore as for Benedict, the key thing is Love, which can only happen between persons, not institutions.

     Moore’s comments on the Catholic Church are of interest as well, particularly in light of Pope Benedict’s talk.  When Lopez asks why “it is important for the Catholic Church to lead on these things”, he answers

For most of our history, English and American Baptist Christians thought the greatest threat to religious liberty would come from the Roman Catholic Church. Now we find that some of our greatest allies on religious freedom are Roman Catholics. The threat to our religious liberties comes from a different papacy than we thought — that of a secularizing statism that seeks to pave over consciences with government power.

This would seem to be an example of what Benedict meant by bringing “common witness into the context of these great ethical challenges of our time.”   Of Pope Francis in particular Moore says:

I was especially cheered by his comments on marriage, especially given the media confusion just weeks earlier over the synod deliberations on the family. Pope Francis made it clear that he believes male/female complementarity is essential to marriage and that this cannot be undone or erased by modern ideologies. He also made clear that he believes that every child has the right to both a mother and a father.

It’s worth noting that the Baptist leader not only welcomes papal leadership in the cultural struggle, but seems as disappointed as many of us Catholics about the confusion emanating from the recent Synod on the Family.

     There is much else that is of interest in Lopez’s interview with Russell Moore, more than I can discuss here, but I’ll look at one last thing.  In response to a question about Christmas, Moore makes the following observations:

. . . the Christmas season ought to drive us to the biblical text, which is not all tinsel and garlands. Instead, the Christmas narrative is set in the context of spiritual warfare, of a light that is shining out of darkness.

For several years, I’ve been convinced that the model we most need in this day is that of Joseph of Nazareth. In a day when fathers are seen as expendable, we should look at Joseph, who sacrificed his own future for his wife and child. In a world filled with orphans in need of families, we should look at the example of this adopting father who poured out himself to become a father to one who was of no biological relation to him.

The Holy Family

It’s refreshing to hear a prominent Baptist speaking of St. Joseph in this way; he sounds almost Catholic (and in fact I have made similar observations myself: here for instance).  

     Of course, I’m not saying that we are seeing the end of the Reformation era divisions in the Church, or even the beginning of the end (to paraphrase Winston Churchill), but such signs of the thawing of emotional barriers, and the working of the Power of Love, are reason for Hope.  I propose that during this Advent, the Season of Hope, we make special intercession to St. Joseph, Foster-father of the Son of God,  Watchful defender of Christ,  Head of the Holy Family (and hence for the entire Christian Family), for the healing of the divisions in his Son’s Mystical Body.

O God, who in Thine ineffable providence didst vouchsafe to choose blessed Joseph to be the spouse of Thy most holy Mother: grant, we beseech Thee, that we may have him for an intercessor in heaven, whom we venerate as our protector on earth. Who livest and reignest world without end. Amen. 

What Is A "Hermeneutic Of Suspicion", And Why Does It Matter?

What The Heck Is Hermeneutics?  

Back in my undergraduate days my roommate took a class called "Hermeneutics." Not surprisingly, I felt compelled to ask, "What the heck is hermeneutics?" He explained that the word comes from the Greek word ἑρμηνεύω (hermeneuo) "to interpret", and is related to the name of the god Hermes, bringer and interpreter of dreams. Hermeneutics, then, means interpretation, and when we speak of a hermeneutic, we mean a framework through which one interprets raw information.  Even if we don't know the term, we all know the concept: if we say someone "sees the world through rose colored glasses", for instance, we mean that they employ a "hermeneutic of optimism"; if you refer to another person as being "always under a dark cloud", they have a "hermeneutic of pessimism".  If we want a somewhat more sophisticated example, someone who uses a Marxist hermeneutic interprets everything through to the lens of Class Struggle.

Hermes the Interpreter

    For most of us it seems a pretty esoteric word, and even if it's a part of our working vocabulary, it's probably not included in our everyday vocabulary.  Nonetheless, it's a handy term to have.  It gave Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), for instance, a very clear and precise way of summing up the the foundational error of both the "Spirit of Vatican II" progressives and the Lefebvrist ultra-traditionalists: both camps interpret the Second Vatican Council through a "hermeneutic of rupture", when the council should more properly be viewed through a "hermeneutic of continuity".  In other words, both groups operate with the assumption that Vatican II is a decisive break with the previous nineteen centuries of Catholic Tradition, the only difference being one group thinks that's a good thing, the other decidedly not.  Ratzinger was proposing that instead we should interpret the council with and through that Tradition.

The Hermeneutic of Suspicion

     A similar problem, one that can be found not only among die-hard progressives and rad trads, but also among many people who consider themselves "faithful Catholics, but . . ." (and in fact it's a temptation for all of us), is the "Hermeneutic of Suspicion". In other words, the default position that for any issue on which the Church takes a stance contrary to my preconceived ideas, political loyalties, the prevailing popular wisdom, or whatever else, She must convince me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my position is wrong and that her position is right.  This hermeneutic of suspicion is most conspicuously at play in the massive dissent from the traditional Catholic teaching on sexuality and family (which is not limited, by the way, to those who consider themselves "progressive").

    Am I saying that to be a good Catholic we need to stop thinking for ourselves, or "mindlessly" go along with the Church, as anti-Catholics are fond of telling us?  Not at all.   But nobody thinks and decides in a vacuum, we all need some basis for interpreting our world; "give me a place to stand", said Archimedes, "and I will move the world".  Being Catholic has always meant that we stand on the moral and metaphysical framework provided by Christ 's Church, and the Gospel as understood by that Church, not by the conventional wisdom or the prejudices of the cultural elite.

The Pillar and Foundation of Truth

    The demand that the Church must exhaustively prove to my satisfaction any teaching that does not correspond to my preferences before I believe, in fact,  seems to me to be the exact opposite of what has been normative for those who consider themselves faithful Catholics throughout the history of the Church.  St. Paul refers to “the church of the living God” as “the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), and in another place he makes explicit where the believer is to stand in case of conflict between the Truth of God and the conventional wisdom:

           Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool so as to become wise.  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God, for it is written: "He catches the wise in their own ruses," and again: "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain."  (1 Cor. 3:18-20)

It was understood in the early Church as well, where the authority to make final and binding decisions lay.  St. Augustine once said:

For already two councils on this question have been sent to the apostolic see; and replies have also come from there.  The cause is finished [causa finita est]; would that the error might be sometime finished also! (Sermon 131:10)

The expression causa finita est  comes from the practice of law; the modern expression that most closely corresponds to causa finita est is “case closed!”  To Augustine it seems a given that the replies from Rome have ended the discussion.

           More than a thousand years later St. Ignatius of Loyola is even more explicit in the Spiritual Exercises when he lists the rules “to have the true sentiment which we ought to have in the Church Militant”:  

Pope Paul III and St. Ignatius Loyola

To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit see which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls. Because by the same Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten Commandments, our holy Mother the Church is directed and governed.

                          

    St. Ignatius is not urging that Catholics leave their brain behind when they enter the Church: notice that he does not refer simply to white, but "the white which I see".  In other words, when it comes to fundamental categories (i.e., right and wrong), we need to trust the Church's judgment over our own, because she has been promised the guidance of the Holy Spirit, while we, as individuals, have not.

Every Man A Pope

    It really could not be any other way.  If we make ourselves the ultimate arbiters of truth instead of deferring to the Church, then the individual believer becomes, in effect, infallible, his or her own Pope, the result of which could only be thousands upon thousands of little schisms; any sort of real communion becomes impossible.  In fact, that is exactly what we see among our separated brethren in the Protestant communities, whose separate denominations are now said to number in the tens of thousands, less than five hundred years after Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg.

    In the end, faith itself becomes an impossibility, if there is no Truth greater than my own personal "truth".  And if I’m the supreme judge, why do I need a church to teach me anything? For that matter, what use is religion at all, or a Divine Savior, if it’s up to me to determine whether there’s any sin from which to save me? Isn’t that the logical end-point of the Hermeneutic of Suspicion?  Just myself, closed in upon myself. That’s an awfully cold, lonely way to spend eternity; it brings to mind what St. Paul says: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).  Paul, of course, knows the answer: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25).  Only Christ can save me from myself, I myself who “do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want” (Romans 7:19).  This same Christ has given His Church the power to bind and loose (Matthew 18:18); who am I, or any of us, to be its judge?

On Being A Child Of This Age

G. K. Chesterton

The great G.K. Chesterton said of the Catholic Church: “ It is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” If you doubt that the slavery of our particular age is getting more degrading by the day, consider the following random samples from the unraveling of our once-Christian culture:

- The big news from last week, of course, was the U.S. Supreme Court’s “finding” that the Constitution of the United States mandates that states may not exclude same-sex couples from their definition of marriage.  In his dissent from the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts  wrote “The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent.” No, but it is perfectly attuned to the Spirit of this Age.

- A major newspaper in Pennsylvania announces that it “will no longer accept, nor will it print, op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage”, with the grudging exception that it would “for a limited time, accept letters and op-Eds on the high court's decision and its legal merits.”  Journalists in the United States may claim to have an unshakable commitment to free speech, but the Spirit of our Age does not tolerate opposition.

- It is equally intolerant of any disagreement on the new conventional wisdom that sex, or “gender”, is not something inborn, but a thing we can create for ourselves and change at will. Actress Alice Eve learned this the hard way after she pointed out via social media the seemingly obvious fact that cosmetic surgery can’t turn male Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner into an actual woman.  After a torrent of abuse from the forces of tolerance, she was soon sounding uncannily like the victim of one of Stalin’s show trials: “Maybe this needs a little thought. I felt confused and now I feel enlightened and like I know what education I need to move forward.” 

-Since “gender reassignment” surgery is such a good thing, how can we withhold it from anyone? The New York Times, in an article celebrating surgical intervention of this sort for teens, reports that in Oregon 15 year-olds can undergo this mutilating, life-changing procedure at state expense . . . and without parental consent. The Times reports that “advocates say that extending treatment to teenagers will alleviate depression and suicide”, although it concedes that “The evidence is mixed. A large-scale Swedish study at the Karolinska Institute found that starting about a decade after gender reassignment surgery, transgender people were still more than 19 times as likely to die by suicide as the general population [link here, which the NYT somehow forgot to include].”  Other researchers have published similarly grim results, such as this U.S. study that found more than four out of ten transsexuals have attempted suicide. Perhaps it would more “mixed” if they could point to other studies  demonstrating an upside?

     - This article at Life Site News reports on Laura, a healthy, 24 year-old woman in Belgium who will be killed by lethal injection this summer, simply because she doesn’t want to live.  She says, “Life, that’s not for me.”  Well, to each his or her own, I suppose.  After all, she has received official approval. Interestingly, one of the psychiatrists who signed off on her case is currently hawking a book touting “euthanasia for psychological reasons”, so Laura can get what she wants and give the doc a little publicity as well.  The Spirit of the Age calls that a win-win!

I could go on, but you get the idea.  The proverbial Visitor From Another World could only conclude that we are in the midst of some sort of suicidal societal dementia, or possessed by a malevolent demon that renders us incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy, and that is intent on destroying not only us as individuals but also the institutions that sustain us.  Or perhaps, if he’s familiar with Earth literature, he might see us as an entire world full of Victor Frankensteins who, like the eponymous protagonist of Mary Shelley’s novel, seek to usurp God’s power of creation, only to spawn a destructive force beyond our control.  It would be easy to look at the Signs of the Times and despair.

    Despair, however, is not an option for us, because despair means giving up hope. Christian hope is the confidence that God will fulfill his promises of mercy and salvation, and if we surrender that trust, we are giving up on God; we are in fact, committing a grave sin. Instead, St. Paul instructs us to “Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (Romans 12:12).  In other words, if we stay connected to our Lord, and endure our present hardships with His help, we will be with Him in His final victory. That’s not a bad deal.

    Clinging to the Lord, of course, is not simply a personal matter; we are called to be witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Who knows? Our wayward countrymen may yet amaze us like the Ninevites surprised Jonah when they repented in sackcloth and ashes (see Jonah 3).  Short of that happy but unlikely outcome, we might at least rescue some fortunate individuals; as scripture tells us,“whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20).  Finally, by remaining faithful to Christ we can serve as one of his instruments in preserving his Church, which will be a source of healing after today’s craziness has run its course.  As the future Pope Benedict XVI said in a famous radio address almost half a century ago, “when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.”

    Which brings us back to where we started. Chesterton tells us that the Catholic Church is the only thing that frees us from enslavement to whatever the current foolishness happens to be.  But it is not a freedom for our own sake alone, it is freedom for service: service to our Lord and our fellow men and women, and service to the Truth . . . and the truth about humanity is and always has been that we were made to love and serve the Lord in this world, and to be eternally happy with him in the next.  Isn’t that infinitely better than anything the Spirit of This Age has to offer?

    

On Being A Christian In Public Life (Worth Revisiting)

This post was originally published on the 29th of April 2014. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers visit Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

     One need not buy in to the confusing and often intentionally obfuscating "Wall of Separation" language here in the Unites States to acknowledge that the proper role for a believing Christian to play in public and political life can be a complicated question, and today more than ever with political structures that are both democratic and pluralistic. This is true throughout the developed world.  As in other areas of decision-making, we need to apply our personal judgment in determining how to act in specific situations, but those judgments must be informed and guided by the moral law and the teaching of the Church.  One teaching document that I have found to be enormously helpful in sorting out this question is the Doctrinal Note On Some Questions Regarding The Participation Of Catholics In Political Life [text here], published November 2002 with the authorization of Pope (now Saint) John Paul II, an under the name of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI).

     The Doctrinal Note, despite its narrow focus (it’s only about eight pages long) is a wonderfully rich yet concise discussion, as one would expect from Joseph Ratzinger.  It’s worth a much fuller treatment than I can give it today (I may address that in the future), but right now I want to look at just a couple of main points.

First of all, participating in public and political life is a good thing:

It is commendable that in today’s democratic societies, in a climate of true freedom, everyone is made a participant in directing the body politic. Such societies call for new and fuller forms of participation in public life by Christian and non-Christian citizens alike . . . The life of a democracy could not be productive without the active, responsible and generous involvement of everyone, “albeit in a diversity and complementarity of forms, levels, tasks, and responsibilities”. (sec. 1, citations omitted)

As Catholic Christians, however, we have a particular mission to fulfill, a “proper task”:

By fulfilling their civic duties, “guided by a Christian conscience”, in conformity with its values, the lay faithful exercise their proper task of infusing the temporal order with Christian values, all the while respecting the nature and rightful autonomy of that order, and cooperating with other citizens according to their particular competence and responsibility. (sec. 1, citations omitted)

In other words, we need to recognize our mission to be Salt and Light to a world in desperate need of the Truth (see Matthew 5:13), while at the same time respecting the freedom of those who might disagree. 

     The Doctrinal Note goes on to say that such involvement on our part in not only good, but is in fact essential if democratic governance is to survive:

At the same time, the Church teaches that authentic freedom does not exist without the truth. “Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.” In a society in which truth is neither mentioned nor sought, every form of authentic exercise of freedom will be weakened, opening the way to libertine and individualistic distortions and undermining the protection of the good of the human person and of the entire society. (sec. 7, citations omitted)

This last point also indicates the limits of politics and political systems, and actually reminds me of something John Adams once said.  Adams lived a fascinating life: he was a leader in the movement for American independence, a well-traveled diplomat in 18th century Europe, the first Vice President of the United States under George Washington, and Washington’s successor as President.  He was also a deeply religious man (although not, alas, Catholic) with solid moral convictions who thought seriously and incisively about the nature of government and the proper relationship between the government and the governed. He put all of these things into practice as the chief architect of the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the world’s oldest written constitution that is still in use.

The eminently quotable John Adams

     He was, in addition to all that, an outspoken man of considerable wit.  One of my favorite Adams quotes comes from his legal defense of the British soldiers on trial for shooting Bostonians in the Boston Massacre.  Said Adams: “Facts are stubborn things.”  More to the point of this essay, in reference to the Constitution of the United States he said: “Our constitution was made only for the government of a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”  While Adams believed that a republic is the form of government most suited to the dignity of men, and that the republic established by the U.S. Constitution was the best the world had yet seen, such a system could not succeed if those who were participating in it were more interested in feeding their appetites than they were committed to furthering the good, the true and the beautiful.  True freedom, both the Church and Adams agree, is only possible for people who know, and who have been formed in, the Truth.

     And that leads us to the limits of politics and government.  Our actions as citizens in a republic are guided by, and in that sense subordinate to, our properly formed consciences; likewise, the policies of the government are subject to a higher moral law.  If our consciences are not properly formed, no law can make us good (I approach this idea from a slightly different angle in my post “Hidden Law, Society And Catholic Teaching” [link]).  At best, we can hope to encourage good behavior by providing incentives for it, and discourage bad behavior by providing disincentives.  And when you have a large number of people with improperly formed consciences combined with government incentives to bad behavior, you face societal and political break-down. 

      What that means for us is that our first and most important task is to be the best Catholic Christians we can be, before we ever cast a vote or sign a petition.  To the degree that we create a more Christian society, we make possible a more just government. We should approach direct political action with the understanding that whatever we do politically (and not, certainly, to subordinate our consciences to majority opinion or the party platform), it is guided by, and in service to, the Higher Truth. Government can do many good and essential things: provide for a common defense, nurture a secure environment for civil society to flourish, build and maintain infrastructure, help alleviate the temporary effects of poverty and abuse. It can not do everything, however, nor should it try: in keeping with the Principle of Subsidiarity [link], we should beware of the the government subsuming responsibilities that rightfully belong to individuals or other associations, especially the family or the Church.  Finally, as Christians we have to know that, however much the state can do, only Jesus Christ can bring about the kingdom of God.